All Articles Tagged "meshell ndegeocello"

When trying to get into a new artist, or even trying to talk about one of your favorites, I always find it interesting the different ways people pronounce an artist with a complicated moniker’s name. I mean, how were you saying Jamiroquai when they first blew up? Did you know how to say Mtume when you were jamming to “Juicy Fruit”? With that in mind, I thought I’d help you with the pronunciations of a few names you’ve heard and/or probably seen in the past or in the past few years at least, but might not have been saying correctly. I know I was messing all the way up on a few of these:

Goapele

– click at 0:15 mark

My friend swore Goapele’s name was pronounced, “geo-pel,” but she was waaaay off. Think of it more as “go-op-ull-ay”:

Meshell Ndegeocello is a singer, songwriter, and musician whose prolific artistry is perhaps just as notorious as her desire for keeping her personal life to her self. Though the 45-year-old has never kept her sexual relationships with both genders a secret, it’s not something she speaks on often, preferring to let her music categorize her and decisions on her likability from one person to the next to be based on that, rather than her sexual orientation. In fact, in a recent interview with TheBoomBox.com, she said:

“It’s sad that people’s personal lives take such precedent. I just think it’s funny that these issues even come up.”

Meshell didn’t stop there, though, in her interview for TheBoomBox’s Off The Record series. She went on to say this about her own sexual identity:

“I’ve come up with a new term: I am sexually functional with both genders. I just choose to be with this particular one. Who knows what the future holds? It’s just such a weird concept to me that it’s so important to how you judge my music or my character or anything about me. I’m never assuming what heterosexual people are doing.”

Within that context, it’s easy to see why Meshell went on to say that making music is the only time she feels gender-less and race-less and that “it’s just a nice feeling.”

Head over to TheBoomBox.com to check the rest of Meshell’s interview, as she talks about Prince inspiring her to make real records and performs covers of Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” and Nina Simone’s “Be My Husband.”

What do you think about the comments from Meshelle Ndegeocell on orientation?

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I’m sure you were somewhere getting in your feelings to the jams of these ladies. If not, you were pretending to be more cultured because you knew the words to Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason,” either way, the women behind some of our favorite emotional jams had more talent in their pinky fingers than most singers had in their whole bodies. Many achieved a pretty good level of success, and some are happy just making music, but they’re very underrated to us.

For years, there has been media speculation concerning the sexuality of celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Queen Latifah, Eddie Murphy, Johnny Gill, and more recently, Raven Symone. The trip out of the closet has been a long one for African American celebrities, evident by the fact there aren’t nearly as many out and open black celebrities as there are white. We don’t often see black celebrities walking around, publicly showcasing their love like Sex and the City’s Cythia Nixon and her girlfriend; Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi; or Elton John and David Furnish. That isn’t to say that there aren’t any out African American celebrities though. In fact, we’ve got an entire list of proud gay celebrities.

WANDA SYKES

This comedian has been making people laugh since she began her stand-up career in 1987 at a Coors Light Super Talent Showcase in Washington DC. She got her first big break opening for Chris Rock at Caroline’s Comedy Club, and since then she’s made a career of being an award-winning television and movie actress, stand-up comedian, and writer. Sykes publicly came out on as a lesbian in November 2008 after the passing of Proposition 8 in California.